David Byewas at the reception desk at his San Francisco tennis club when he heard a member wish a staff member a happy new year.

"Apparently so," said the staff member. "You just gave me your cannabis card to sign up for a court."

Nancy Wong serves as a court-appointed attorney to represent foster children in San Francisco. Shortly before Christmas, when she heard through a grapevine of lawyers who do similar work that Chris Laneof Roaring Mouse Cycles was donating 20 bikes to kids, in memory of the 20 kids killed in Connecticut, she thought of four siblings she represents, who are being fostered by their aunt.

Although she describes herself as "somewhat curious and a little cynical," as soon as she contacted Lane, "He didn't bat an eye, he just did it. ... He said, 'Sure, let's do it.' "

The kids are between 3 and 12, and last week, when she followed up, she learned that "they got their bikes. And they're wonderful." The lack of red tape was part of Lane's vision. "I wanted to keep it simple, to do it on trust," he said. "I didn't want to make a big deal of it."

He says he has a child, too, and giving the bikes to other children was "very close to me. We're a fairly high-end bike shop, and people are often surprised we sell kids' bikes, but that to me is the most rewarding part. It's worth it."

Filmmaker George Lucas is a pretty private kind of guy. So there was little information available from his spokes people after last week's announcement that Lucas, 68, and financial expert/"Good Morning America" contributor Mellody Hobson, 43, have become engaged. They've been a couple for six years, it was said, and they're "very excited."

But in last year's interview with Oprah Winfrey, she asked the couple how they'd met (at a conference, and "how else would a financial person and a movie person ever be in the same place at the same time," said Lucas), and why their relationship works. "I think it works because we are extraordinarily open-minded people," said Hobson, "and we are open to what the universe brings us. And I think we didn't have preconceived ideas about what a partner should be, and so we allowed ourselves to discover something that was unexpected."

Artist-urban planner Ben Davis, who's been hard at work raising money for "The Bay Lights," e-mailed his delight at "The Lights" being named No. 1 in United Airlines' Hemispheres magazine of "25 new things to see and do this year around the world." "The Bay Lights" is Leo Villareal's art installation on the Bay Bridge, to be unveiled in a "grand lighting ceremony" on March 5.

Davis, who speaks at SPUR on Wednesday about the project, is also basking in a recent story about the project in the New York Times Style magazine. Villareal will speak at SFMOMA on Feb. 7.

All this is a very happy, exciting reason to rejoice. And there's also reason to want preopening-ceremony attention. The whole shebang is an $8 million project; so far, $5.8 million in private funds has been raised. So although the installation is under way, Davis is still $2.2 million short of what he calls "finishing funds."

Family, friends and admirers of Nancy Emmonsgathered Saturday to mark her 100th birthday, on the occasion of which a statement read into the Congressional Record by Rep. Sam Farr, D-Carmel, was shared.

Emmons, born in Indiana, came to San Francisco in the mid-1930s, "wandered into an ad agency looking for a job, and was immediately offered a job as 'Miss Oakland' on a float inaugurating the opening of the Bay Bridge in November 1936." A newspaper photo of this float noted that Nancy Pierson (her maiden name), representing Oakland, was with Marguerite Mowrey, representing San Francisco, and their hands were joined "over a replica of the central pier of the $77,200,000 bridge."

Later, Miss Oakland married architect Donn Emmons, raised a family and achieved recognition as a sculptor. The congressman's parents had been friends of the Emmonses, and this official statement also included the fact that she had been present at his own birth.

Public Eavesdropping

"I ask him why, if he can be in a bar for three hours, why can't he be in a restaurant for one hour, or a department store for 35 minutes?"

Woman to woman, the speaker e-mailing photos of merchandise, overheard at Nordstrom in Corte Madera by Liz Stewart